With spite in our rotting bones (And flowers in our hair)
by lordhellebore
Summary: Who'd have imagined that wights have a love life? True, it's a bit passive regarding touching each other and involves eating people, but Jaime certainly won't complain.


They fought bravely. They gave it their all.

They lost anyway.

Jaime can't tell when exactly it was that the battle turned. They'd started out well, two dragons and all, and they had even managed to bring down the undead one. Turns out real fire – two to one, at least – will burn an undead ice dragon, after all. Heck, they all had weapons made of dragonglass; swords, and spears, and arrows, and they'd used them, killing white walkers and dozens – sometimes hundreds – of wights alongside every single one of them. Still, it hadn't been enough. The battle had gone well, until it hadn't, and he'd been alive one moment, fighting off wights back to back with Brienne, until – well.

He remembers being overrun by sheer numbers, and blinding pain, though the memory of that is getting blurrier by the day, together with a whole lot of others – and who'd have thought a wight even had any memories of being alive in the first place? Because there's that: he's a wight now. As is Brienne, as is everyone in the North.

His first thought upon opening his eyes again had been: "Nothing hurts, and it's not freezing. I've got to be dead." He'd been right, though he hadn't quite realised just then what that meant. What he had realised was that this? – wasn't what he'd been expecting.

He didn't know what he _had_ been expecting, but it certainly hadn't been waking up and finding himself face to face with Brienne, who was looking at him with eyes that seemed even more breathtakingly blue than he remembered them. It's only now that he is dead that he can admit to himself that he'd been convinced he would end up in one of the Seven Hells, for trying to murder Bran Stark at the very least, if not for more, and _that_ certainly was no place Brienne belonged in.

So when he'd found her right beside him, his second thought had been: "That can't be right. I'm not dead after all."

Only then he'd seen the wounds on her. There were at least half a dozen, and they couldn't be written off as grazes or even flesh wounds. She'd been mauled, no, eviscerated was more like it; her armour was gone, her whole mid-section a mess of torn flesh and blood – and yet she was sitting up and staring at him, unblinking, with her amazing blue eyes, which had always reminded him of the sky, or cornflowers, but which now were shining brighter, colder. Ice-blue.

That's when he'd finally got it.

Strangely enough, he hadn't been all that upset at the idea of what had happened. Slowly, he got to his feet, and next to him Brienne did the same. All around him, he noticed, the dead were rising; just a few feet away, Jon Snow was standing, his furs torn half off, his skull split wide open. He'd been supposed to lead them to victory, he and Danaerys Targaryen, both riding her remaining dragons into battle. It had fit, considering Jon was no real Snow, wasn't even truly Jon, but Aegon Targaryen, rightful heir to the Iron Throne.

But that doesn't matter anymore; they're all the same now, kings and lords and smallfolk. Walking, always walking south, day and night, never tiring, never stopping, killing every man, woman, and child in their way, with the dragons circling above them. He'd have despised himself before to lay hand on defenceless people, Jaime still knows it, but now, he can't seem to care anymore. He walks, and he kills – it's a compulsion he can't escape, and he doesn't want to.

There's just one other thing he wants besides these two, and that, too, he's got: Brienne is walking beside him, never straying far even in the frenzy of killing whoever happens to be in their way. Every now and then, she'll turn to him, look at him with eyes that are just as beautiful now as they used to be when they were alive. She doesn't smile, doesn't speak – they can't do that, or if they can, then they don't feel the need to – but it's unnecessary anyway. He knows, feels it in every fibre of his rotting flesh as clearly as he feels the Night King's command: they're together, they always will be, and to hell with the rest.

There are other pairs like them, more and more as they overrun whole towns and villages, and he doesn't doubt that they feel the same. He's seen Jon and Daenerys walking side by side, their strife about the succession forgotten. There's Bran – who now walks again instead of flying – and Meera Reed, and to his surprise, Sansa Stark is walking beside Sandor Clegane. "Little bird," the man had called her sometimes when he'd thought nobody paid them attention, and from the way she had looked at him, Jaime realizes now that he could have known sooner had he bothered to notice - but truth be told, he'd been busy shagging his brains out with Brienne. They don't get to do that anymore, but he finds he doesn't miss it, which he vaguely thinks is a pity.

Slowly, but steadily, they cross the Neck into the Riverlands. At the Twins, the corpses of the Freys rise from shallow graves to join them, and not far downriver, a skeleton that seems to be part man and part wolf approaches to take its place next to Theon Greyjoy.

"I'd promised him my sword, now and always," Greyjoy had admitted to Jaime one evening close to the battle that had found both of them sitting with dark thoughts. "All this time while … while I was here, after, I thought I … that I should have died with him. They all forgave me, but even so – we shouldn't be apart, not like this."

They've got their _now and always_ now, and while it's not the way they wanted - well. Jaime doubts they feel any more regrets than he does, feel anything but the need to walk, and kill, and never be parted again.

Jaime doesn't know how long it takes them to reach King's Landing. By the time they're there, he doesn't think the army of the dead could be counted anymore – everyone living north of the city in all of Westeros is with them. His mind has been pleasantly blank except for his three imperatives; more and more memories of feelings and thoughts from when he'd been alive have faded away. He's got no need for them anymore.

Now that the city comes into sight, though, there's something unpleasant stirring, a feeling he'd thought had long died with the others. He tries not to think about it, but it's hard, and that's irritating. He's grateful when they reach the gates and he can focus on only one thing for a while.

Flea Bottom is overrun quickly, and most of the nobles seem to have fled, leaving only empty houses in their wake. Not all, though, and in a large backyard filled with a few naked trees and a small glass garden full of blue winter roses, they meet what must be almost three dozen men in the foolish attempt to make a stand. They fight bravely, as Jaime once had, but of course the wights are too many and make short work of them.

When the fighting is over, Jaime looks around for Brienne. He sees Sam and Gilly then, and their little one – naked, ribs and other bones visible by now as his flesh keeps receding – biting down to tear out one of the last knights' throat. Some faraway part of him thrums with the knowledge that he should be horrified, but it dies away as fast as it came – and then his gaze falls on Brienne.

She stands tall over most others, eyes fixed on him; the glass garden was destroyed during the fight, and she must have fallen at some point, because there are rose petals and even a few whole winter roses tangled in her matted hair.

"They complement her eyes," he thinks, and it doesn't matter that her nose is almost gone, that naked tendons stand out on her neck, and some of the fingers that hold her sword are only bones anymore.

Before he can think any further, though, he feels the pull of his king's will, as do the others, and they begin leaving the garden, making their way, slowly, to the Red Keep.

The feeling is getting stronger the closer they get – he's irritated, agitated, and he can sense that in turn, it's irritating Brienne, who keeps looking over at him fare more often than usual. He wishes he could explain, or better yet, make it go away, but all he can do is go on in growing annoyance. What in the Seven Hells is wrong with him (apart from being undead)?

It's anger, Jaime realises as the gates of the Red Keep splinter under the onslaught of wights. He's angry – he'd almost forgotten how it feels, but oh, he remembers all right now, just as he remembers who it is he's angry with. One look at Brienne is enough to convey his intentions, and they're on their way.

The castle is emptier than he'd have thought, but then, loyalty and even gold don't mean much when an army of wights and white walkers is approaching, so maybe it's unsurprising that more than half of the guards and servants seem to have deserted their queen.

One guard, though, Jaime expects will still be there – and he's right. The Mountain stands before the door to her chambers, monstrous and silent, just as undead as them. He could be dangerous, tear them apart too badly for them to be able to go on, but even as he thinks it, more wights catch up with them, engaging Clegane in a battle Jaime knows he'll lose, in a while. And while he's distracted…

Cersei doesn't turn, at first, when he opens the door. She's standing at the window, very still, looking out at the dying city with a glass of wine clutched tightly in her right hand. Had he expected anything else?

She must know she'll die any moment; the sounds of the fight are audible from the corridor, though curiously, no wights other than him and Brienne have entered. Finally, when she is not attacked, she slowly turns to face them.

"J-Jaime?!" The glass falls from her fingers and shatters, her eyes wide as she stares at him in what he recognises as horror. He's never seen that on her before, has never seen so much genuine emotion on her, he realises.

So this – seeing him rotting and undead and yet moving, seeing him come for her – is what it takes to shock his sister into showing true feeling. He'd thought he had seen it in the past, when she had slept with him, when she'd told him that nobody mattered but the two of them. Maybe she'd been closest when she had grieved for their children. But nothing of it had been real, and it makes him angrier than he can remember ever being when he'd been alive.

No, he's not simply angry, he is _enraged_, because now that he's dead and standing before her, he remembers more than he cares to know: every cruel word, every unkind action, and what she'd done to him, to _them_, from the beginning. They could have had something beautiful, something special – damn it, he'd gone almost all his life thinking they _did_ – but she had destroyed it, twisted it, even as a child. He'd forgotten all about it; his mind had, somehow, chosen to forget. Maybe, he wonders faintly, recalling what he'd seen done in war, recalling the way their mother had stared at her in shock and disgust, it had been necessary for him to survive. As it stands, that's not a concern he has any longer.

He wants to tell her that he knows now, he knows _everything_, most of all that he can't fathom how she – or he, truly – could ever have thought they were even remotely alike. But when he tries, no sound will come; if he ever was capable of speech after his death, by now it has rotted away. Oh, well. In the end, it doesn't matter all that much anyway.

"Jaime," she repeats, lifting her hand almost as if she were reaching out to him. She's done it so often, he remembers, and he remembers the tone of her voice as well. Beseeching, persuasive. Or at least it had seemed like that to him. Now he finds it grotesque. Is she truly expecting that she can reason with the undead?

He looks at Brienne, who nods once before she, like him, turns back to Cersei. Jaime means to have seen anticipation in her eyes, and that, too, is a feeling they share.

"No!" Cersei gasps as he makes the first step towards her. "No, you can't!" She steps back as they advance, but there's only the wall and the window behind her, and Jaime doubts she'll have the courage to jump. Besides, even if she were to survive the fall, the outside is swarming with wights just the same.

"Stop it, Jaime!" She's pressed against the wall now, eyes wide and frightened, but also still angry, as if she hadn't understood quite yet that this is the end. "Ser Gregor! Ser Gregor, _help_!"

No help comes, however. The fighting sounds out on the corridor have stopped; it's just the three of them now.

He reaches for her, undeterred, and she shrieks and –

If he could, Jaime would double over with laughter. She's slapped him in the face and sent part of the flesh of his cheek flying, which now lands on the floor with a soft, wet sound. For a few moments, there is only silence, and all Jaime can do is marvel at the fact that even now, she tried to _somehow_ force him into submission.

Because that's it, isn't it? What she's wanted from everyone, always, and especially from him – submission. And he'd given it to her, every single day of his life, until so very recently that the time in between still seems like nothing. Well. Not anymore.

When he reaches for her this time, he isn't held back by her flailing hands, by her fingernails sinking into his neck where they claw away rotting tissue. It's easy, so easy to just slam her against the wall, watch her blink in confusion after her head hits the stone, and then go for the kill. Not the throat, though – it would be too quick, quicker than she deserves by far.  
He wants her to suffer.

Luckily, he knows Brienne knows it and wants the same.

"Jaime! – Jaime! – _Jai–_" Cersei's desperate shrieks turn into shrill, tortured howls of pain as both he and Brienne rip her apart with bare hands and teeth, shredding silks and flesh alike, biting and clawing at muscles and tendons until her screams die down and their hands and faces turn slippery with blood.

"She's dead." There's satisfaction in the thought, and they could stop now, but Jaime dismisses the idea within a moment: he wants her gone from his life, or whatever it is he has now, wants her to disappear once and for all. So instead, they go on until there is nothing left but unrecognisable lumps of flesh and splintered bones. She'll be no wight, they made sure of it.

Slowly, the frenzied bloodlust and anger recede, and Jaime gets back to his feet from where he'd been kneeling next to Cersei's sorry remains. Brienne does the same, and he knows that if he were still breathing, her sight would take his breath away.

She's soaked in fresh blood from head to toe, tiny clumps of flesh spattered everywhere, and some winter roses are still stuck in her hair, complementing her eyes which are shining so lovely cold and blue in contrast to her red-dripping face. She's a marvel, and for the first time in a long while Jaime feels something like regret that they can't fuck anymore.

Only - they did, didn't they? This right here, those last few minutes - they had felt each other's thoughts and emotions, as always, had felt their mounting satisfaction spreading with each bite and each spurt of blood, and the only times that had ever compared, had even come close -

Oh.

Well. Who'd have imagined that wights have a love life? True, it's a bit passive regarding touching each other and involves eating people, but Jaime certainly won't complain.

"Let's go." The thought is Brienne's, he knows, but he agrees entirely. Now that Cersei is dead - _gone_, he corrects himself, gone forever - he feels no inclination to linger. His inner turmoil is fading, being replaced, once again, by the desire to walk and obey his king.

He doesn't mind that - as long as Brienne walks with him. So they turn and they leave, and they don't look back.


End file.
